George Will’s Elitist Attack on Mike Huckabee Draws Strong Reaction

Mike Huckabee appalls George Will, and he always has. Will had nothing good to say about Huckabee in 2008, and he is just getting started spewing his outrage at Huckabee’s renewed interest in the GOP nomination for president.

Will writes, “Mike Huckabee’s second run for the Republican presidential nomination will reveal how much embarrassment can emanate from one small town.” This, of course, is a reference to Hope, Arkansas, which also spawned Bill Clinton.

Not known for any religious affiliation, Will is apoplectic that Huckabee blames chasing God from schools for the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. He mocks that, asking whether the shooting at the Aurora, Colorado movie theater resulted from “insufficient praying in America’s cineplexes.”

Huckabee says the U.S. is “rapidly moving toward the criminalaization of Christianity,” and seems to be referring to Christian bakers and others hounded by the law for declining to take part in same-sex weddings. Will mocks Huckabee’s notion of praying for the Supreme Court, noting that the Supreme Court is only one of three branches of government.

Will compares Huckabee to Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, who refused to follow a court order to integrate an Arkansas school, which caused President Eisenhower to send in the 101st Airborne.

Will finds it all so “appalling.”

Evangelical thinker/writer Joe Carter, affiliated with the Acton Institute in Michigan, tells Breitbart News, “It’s disturbing that Mr. Will’s animus toward Gov. Huckabee and his Christian beliefs would lead him to lead to outright lie. Huckabee never vowed to ‘repel Satanic threats to Iowa’s subsidized ethanol industry’ as Mr. Will claims. But it’s even more disheartening that Mr. Will would consider Huckabee’s opposition to ‘judicial supremacy’ to be ‘appalling’.”

Carter points out: “In the United States, the Constitution is the country’s highest authority—not the nine justices of the Supreme Court. Judicial supremacy. The idea that the Supreme Court has the final word on the meaning of the Constitution was rejected by, among others, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Abraham Lincoln. Would Mr. Will compare President Lincoln to Gov. Orval Faubus because of his decision to ignore the Dred Scott ruling?”

“I miss the days when Will was the type of conservative who would champion the rule of law. Now he slanders politicians who don’t share his un-conservative confusion about constitutional supremacy being the same as judicial supremacy,” said Carter.

Frank Cannon runs the influential American Principles Project founded by Professor Robert George of Princeton. The group hosted one of the presidential debates during the last cycle. Cannon and his group welcomed Huckabee upon his recent announcement.

In response to the Will column, Cannon told Breitbart News, “Mike Huckabee speaks passionately and accurately to two troubling national trends– the coarsening of the culture and the elites relentless attack on religion. Judicial supremacy has been challenged by some of the countries best minds including Lew Lehrman and professor Robert George, among others. It was president Lincoln who signed a bill outlawing slavery in the district of Columbia in response to the dred scott supreme court decision. Governor Huckabee will be a force in this election despite the snickering in elite circles.”